


Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

by Lady_Layla



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Bucky Barnes saves the day, F/M, Heroes reference, Pre-Relationship, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 03:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13402167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Layla/pseuds/Lady_Layla
Summary: Bucky Barnes has only been living with the other Avengers a few months when he receives a visitor from the future with a weird message. "Save the Cheerleader"





	Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freudensteins_monster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudensteins_monster/gifts).



> Based on this post by freudensteins_monster: http://freudensteins-monster.tumblr.com/post/169658990101/save-the-cheerleader-save-the-world  
> I hope this lives up to your awesome fic idea <3
> 
> Advance apologies because I'm not super great at writing action scenes!

Nightmares don’t surprise James “Bucky” Barnes, not anymore.

What does surprise him is that even as he’s sitting upright still caught in the throes of his nightmare his senses are screaming at him that he’s not alone.

It takes him a minute to register the figure standing there and when he does his eyes narrow. “What the fuck?” He asks himself.

Because that’s who’s standing at the foot of his bed looking back. His fucking self.

Although, the version of him standing there looks much better than Bucky knows he looks now, his hair is neatly cut somewhere between the Soldier and Bucky from the war, he’s clean shaven, and the haunted look in his eyes is dulled.

“Focus, Barnes. I don’t got a lot of time. Jane’s not sure how long she can keep the dimensional wormhole running.”

“Who can’t keep the what running?”

He’s still in a nightmare, that’s the obvious answer and Bucky ignores the sight of his double to bury his face in his arms, hands winding into his hair to pull on it, the only way he can think of to ground himself.  The hand on his should is unexpected and Bucky reacts on instinct.

If he really is fighting himself he should be evenly matched, but the other version of him is better—better conditioned and better fed, not to mention he looks less scattered and seems to know Bucky’s moves before he makes them. He throws a punch with his metal arm but the other guy catches his fist and holds tight. He throws a punch with his right arm and his fist hits metal. He watches in horror as the dark metal plates on the other guys hand expand (revealing gold plating underneath) and cover his fist, locking into place and effectively handcuffing him to his attacker.

“I don’t got time for this,” the other grumbles. “I’m real. I’m from the future. Things have gone to shit and we’re fighting a losing battle. The brains behind our operation have pinpointed this as the moment in time when everything goes wrong. There’s a girl, a friend of Foster’s. She’s the linchpin. Without her everything goes from bad to worse. Save the cheerleader,” he implores before relinquishing his grip and throwing Bucky across the room.

Bucky barely hits the floor before he’s up again and ready to continue the fight, but his double is nowhere to be seen.

Even as he spins in place, Bucky starts to think that it really was a dream, but the evidence in the form of a super-size dent in his wall  tells him otherwise.

Well, it’s not like he usually goes back to sleep after nightmares anyway, so Bucky does a check of his suite, before locking the door to the bathroom and getting into the shower.

He thinks over every aspect of his future self’s visit, every word uttered, and every movement made, as the hot water pours over him.

“Save the cheerleader.” Keeps circling around in his head and Bucky wonders if Stark hired cheerleaders to follow him around and stroke his ego.

The thought makes him snort, but it’s discarded fairly quickly. The other him had said the girl would be a friend of Foster.

It only takes a second for the mental file on Dr. Jane Foster to settle in the forefront of his mind and he goes through the list of her known associates.

When the sun finally rises  Bucky think about just hiding out in his room for the day, but he can already hear Steve’s knock and if he even mentions staying alone for the day he knows the face Steve will make.

He’s been in the Tower for almost six months, but the last few weeks Steve has decided that Bucky needs more interaction than just Steve, Sam, and his shrink.

Sometimes Bucky really wants to just lay into his friend and tell him to back the hell off, but that would earn him another face.

Steve just wants to help, Bucky knows, but damn he can be an annoying sonuvabitch.

Sighing to himself, Bucky changes into his workout gear and meets Steve at the door to follow him down to the gym. He’s made enough progress that he can actually spar with his friend without trying to kill him.

As they fight Bucky ends up telling Steve about what happened with his time traveling double.

“Time travel, Buck? I’m not really sure that’s possible.” The disbelief that’s plan on his face pisses Bucky off and he shoves his friend hard enough that he stumbles back off the practice mat.

“Yeah, well I didn’t think it would be possible to take an irritating kid from Brooklyn, who was 90 pounds soaking wet and doesn’t know when to give up into a smart-mouthed asshole who can’t stop being a mother hen with a guilt complex the size of fucking Russia, but here we are.”

Bucky spits the last part before turning to stalk off to the locker room. This time his shower is quick and punctuated with angry jerks of his body as he fights not to punch a damn hole in the wall.

Sometimes he thinks that if he had known how Steve would be acting all the time—like he bears the guilt for everything Bucky’s done, like he’s constantly waiting for something to blow up, and the soul crushing disappointment on his stupid face that Bucky isn’t exactly the same—he never would have come in from the cold.

He can hear Steve and Sam talking in hushed voices, just outside of his range for specifics, and he knows that Sam is going to force him to go to an “emergency” session with the shrink and Bucky just doesn’t have the patience for it today.

Dressing quickly he stands up on one of the benches and removes a vent cover so he can peer into the ventilation shaft. It’ll be a tight fight but honestly he’d rather wiggle his way through the vents than deal with Sam or Steve right now, so he does.

It takes him twenty minutes to make it to the next floor (because of course Barton would have the vents booby-trapped) where he can drop down and go back to his room like a regular person.

Despite the irritation coursing through his system, Bucky finally feels calmed down enough from his “episode” last night.

Calm enough to fall face forward on his bed and fall asleep.

* * *

It’s his phone buzzing in his pocket, vibrating against his thigh, that wakes him several hours later and he pulls the device out of his pocket to check.

The message from Steve asking if he still wants to go to Stark’s Halloween party makes him sigh and roll over on his back.

Another attempt to have him “come out of his shell and mingle” and he’d already agreed to go once Steve had informed him Stark wouldn’t actually be throwing the party, his girlfriend would be.

Bucky sighs again and texts back an affirmative because if he doesn’t go to this part Steve’s hovering would increase ten-fold at least.

He heaves himself to his feet and heads into the closet where his Halloween costume is hanging.

By the time he’s managed to work up the nerve to look in the mirror long enough to shave and put the outfit on he can hear Steve knocking at the door.

He attempts to return Steve’s smile when he opens the door and neither of them talk about what happened in the gym as they head up to the penthouse.

When they step out of the elevator he manages an even better for Miss Potts, call me Pepper, because she’d put the whole thing together and made sure that there wouldn’t be too many extra people to make him nervous. Plus, she’d somehow (Steve) found out about his new found love of the Three Musketeers candy bars and had an entire bowl of the king size ones.

“None of those travel size-mini-bar bullshit here!” Stark exclaims to them and everyone else as he gestures to the table full of candy and punch bowls that probably don’t actually contain punch.

Bucky also manages to give Pepper a quick peck on the cheek because Tony had been crazy on the idea of dressing up the penthouse as a mad scientists lab and she’d sent him emails of the entire design process so none of the decorations would trigger any bad memories for him.

He has no idea how Stark manages to keep her around.

“Me either, my friend. But I’m riding this miracle train till she comes to her senses and fucks off.” Tony says clapping him on the back and Bucky winces when realizes he obviously spoke out loud.

It seems almost natural for him to stay on the fringes of the party, he doesn’t wanna trail around after Stevie after all, and he’s got eyes on Sam as he makes his way over.

“You guys are never going to give that shit up are you?” The other man says gesturing to his Brooklyn Dodgers outfit.

Bucky just snorts and eyes Sam’s outfit. “Yeah and what are you supposed to be?”

Sam puffs his chest out. “I’m Indiana Jones!”

The effect is obviously lost on Bucky and Sam deflates with some grumbling before they both turn to take in the rest of the room.

Barton and Natalia are dressed up as a priest and a nun and Bucky isn’t going to touch that mess with a ten foot pole. He mentions as much to Sam who nods in agreement.

Tony is obviously a mad scientist, his lab coat is ripped in several places and dingy looking, with Pepper as his assistant, also in a lab coat but clean. Bruce, sitting in his chair in the other corner, is The Professor from the Chronicles of Narnia.

Steve is sidling up to his other side when Bucky spots the newcomers. Thor is wearing a modern football getup with his...with Doctor Foster apparently wearing her regular attire and when Thor moves to the side he sees her.

Sitting at the ridiculous bar that stretches across one wall is one Darcy Lewis dressed up as a cheerleader.

He’s about to do one of any number of things: go over and talk to her, elbow Steve and point her out, work his way around the room to talk to her, something.

Then, the wall closest to her explodes inward and she’s sent flying to the floor.

Bucky can hear Barton complain that the party hasn’t even been going on for twenty minutes as he starts for Darcy only to be stopped with a hand on his arm.

Steve.

The anger from that morning flood back and he grips Steve’s jaw to force his head in the right direction. “Save the fucking cheerleader.” He growls before jerking his arm out of Steve’s grip and sprinting across the room as it’s suddenly flooded with guys in black tac suits.

He watches as Darcy slowly sits up and gains the attention of one of the goons in black, who moves quickly in her direction. Bucky puts on a burst of speed and pulls out a knife that he uses to cut the arm of the guy reaching for Darcy.

Killing him takes seconds and then he turns to the woman behind him.

Her eyes are wide, but not overly frightened, and her mouth is open.

“Are you hurt?” Bucky grunts.

“You...you saved me.” She replies after a moment.

“Yes. Are you hurt?”

“Why did you save me?”

“Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.”

Darcy makes a strangled sound at him and it’s another moment before she can speak again.

“Did you seriously just quote Heroes at me?”

He blinks at her, the reference once again going over his head, but he doesn’t have time to answer as Natalia appears in his eye-line with Jane and Pepper.

“There’s a safe room down the hall.” Pepper says as quietly as she can over the noise of the fighting and Natalia covers their position.

“I’ll guard the civilians.” He says to her as she’s firing off another shot and motions to Pepper to lead the way, Jane and Darcy holding hands behind her.

Pepper is talking to the voice in the ceiling (an AI Steve keeps reminding him) and it doesn’t take them even a minute to reach the spot where the wall slides away and he ushers them all into the wall.

The panic room isn’t small in the least, there’s a couch lining one wall with a fridge across from it and the only other door leads into a bathroom with a shower.

Pepper watches him take in the room and she smiles. “This is the most basic I could get Tony to agree too.”

Bucky shrugs at her unable to smile back, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

The sudden exclamation of, “You!” has him spinning around with another knife gripped in his hand, but it’s only Darcy with her hands on her hips.

“You wanna tell me what you meant earlier when you were quoting a TV show at me?”

Instead of giving her an answer, Bucky takes a minute to look her over, his gaze lingers on the ridiculous….pom-poms (he thinks is the word) that she’s managed to keep a hold of this entire time. (Honestly, who keeps stuff like that when they’re being attacked?) They’re clutched in each hand, resting on each hip, and suddenly he’s suppressing the urge to laugh.

“Ugh.” Darcy grumps at him as she notices his gaze and she lets one pom-pom drop to the floor so she can unscrew the handle of the other and show him the knife attached.

“I honestly don’t understand how Nat thought these would be helpful.”

This time Bucky does snort a little laugh, which makes the three women smile back at him.

“Sooooo,” Darcy prompts after a few more minutes of silence. “You saved the cheerleader. What now?”

“Dunno. Didn’t get that far.” He says and laughs again at her indigent squawk before holding his hands up in surrender.

“This is going to sound really weird….” he says before launching into the retelling of events from last night.

“Seriously, time travel? That doesn’t seem possible.” Darcy says when he finishes.

“Actually….” Jane starts and Darcy whips around to face her friend who is sheepishly pulling an envelope out of her pocket. “I found this sitting on my notebook in the lab this morning.”

“What is it?” Bucky asks as Jane hands the envelope and it’s contents over to Darcy to read.

“A letter from myself in the future. There’s some stuff in there that only I would know to prove who wrote the letter and the last few pages are the beginning of the notes I’d need in the future to send Bucky back, in case Darcy….you know…. Died.”

Pepper is looking back and forth between the three of them before she speaks up, “Only the beginning notes?”

“Yeah. Apparently there are things that happen in the timeline where Darcy dies that are key to finishing the notes. That way even if someone else gets them they can’t finish the project since Darcy’s alive and everything.”

“Well what now?”

They all turn to Darcy, who’s sunk to the floor and is looking up at him specifically.

“I guess I just gotta keep an eye on you until we figure out what this Big Bad actually is and what they want you for.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm keeping this as a one shot for now. I don't really have ideas to make it longer, but it might happen in the future.  
> Thanks for freudensteins_monster for the prompt!


End file.
